|
But is Absence this privation itself, or something in which
this Privation is lodged?
Anyone maintaining that Matter and Privation are one and the same
in substratum but stand separable in reason cannot be excused
from assigning to each the precise principle which distinguishes
it in reason from the other: that which defines Matter must be
kept quite apart from that defining the Privation and vice versa.
There are three possibilities: Matter is not in Privation and
Privation is not in Matter; or each is in each; or each is in
itself alone.
Now if they should stand quite apart, neither calling for the
other, they are two distinct things: Matter is something other
than Privation even though Privation always goes with it: into
the principle of the one, the other cannot enter even
potentially.
If their relation to each other is that of a snubnose to
snubness, here also there is a double concept; we have two
things.
If they stand to each other as fire to heat- heat in fire, but
fire not included in the concept of heat- if Matter is Privation
in the way in which fire is heat, then the Privation is a form
under which Matter appears but there remains a base distinct from
the Privation and this base must be the Matter. Here, too, they
are not one thing.
Perhaps the identity in substance with differentiation in reason
will be defended on the ground that Privation does not point to
something present but precisely to an absence, to something
absent, to the negation or lack of Real-being: the case would be
like that of the affirmation of non-existence, where there is no
real predication but simply a denial.
Is, then, this Privation simply a non-existence?
If a non-existence in the sense that it is not a thing of
Real-being, but belongs to some other Kind of existent, we have
still two Principles, one referring directly to the substratum,
the other merely exhibiting the relation of the Privation to
other things.
Or we might say that the one concept defines the relation of
substratum to what is not substratum, while that of Privation, in
bringing out the indeterminateness of Matter, applies to the
Matter in itself: but this still makes Privation and Matter two
in reason though one in substratum.
Now if Matter possesses an identity- though only the identity of
being indeterminate, unfixed and without quality- how can we
bring it so under two principles?
|
|